Sunday, January 24, 2010

This one was a lot of fun to work on. I was asked to draw an image of Darkseid (a great comic book villain created by Jack Kirby) for a commissioned painting, and I decided to go for a big wide-angle close-up. After I thumbnailed it, I decided to paint the final for it really big, on a 22 inch piece of board so that I could get loose and have fun with the backgrounds. It was a delight to paint larger again, after months of working on smaller pieces and the whole process was quick and highly enjoyable. The painting was so big it wouldn't even fit on my large-format scanner, so I had to scan it in pieces and patch it back together to post here.Incidentally, drawing the background for this piece reminded me of growing up in Hamilton, Ontario in the 80's. Back then Hamilton had 2 giant steel companies working full time, so I was used to seeing raging fires light up the night sky. It was always an awesome sight.

The final art was painted in gouache and ink, so it needed no photoshop cleanup. If you're interested in seeing the prep sketches for it, you can check them out below:

Here's my quick 10 minute colour thumbnail, which gave me the idea to paint it up nice and wide:This is the pencil sketch for the piece, drawn at about 60% of painted size. I kept the background buildings and flying figures as just simple outlines, since I wanted to stay loose and do most of the "real" drawing in ink:

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Now that it's 2010, I thought it was time to post some new artwork. Unfortunately, I can't share much of the work I've been doing lately due to contractual obligations so, with that in mind, here's a quick watercolour portrait of my wife, my baby girl and I, which I did over the holidays. I've never been very comfortable working in water-colour, so I prefer only using them to mess around with on quick sketches, and not on final work for clients.

Here's hoping that you all had a nice time during your holidays and are enjoying a wonderful start to 2010.

Please note that I do not do accept any private commissions (comic character sketches, family portraits, etc). I also do not sell any prints of my work online. Sketches and prints can usually be purchased at events that I am personally attending. Thanks for your understanding.

If you're interested in purchasing any of my original comics-related art, please visit here.